


the things Ginger knows

by notimeforemotion



Series: a spectacular sort of whiplash [2]
Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Fix-It, Gen, I wasn't kidding when I said I love Merlin, also: I am truly terrible at tagging I apologize, for like all of these fyi, spoilers for TGC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2017-10-24
Packaged: 2019-01-22 09:36:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12478604
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/notimeforemotion/pseuds/notimeforemotion
Summary: There are three things Ginger knows. First, it's not as difficult to keep from drinking the stock as Statesmen field agents make it out to be. Second, it's impolite to listen in on conversations not meant for your ears.Third, Agent Whiskey is a fucking liar.





	the things Ginger knows

There are three things Ginger knows.

First, it’s not as difficult to keep from drinking the stock as Tequila (or Whiskey or Champ or Gin or Moonshine or Lager or any of the other agents) makes it out to be. She might have a little help in this area: she grew up in the city, not the country, where the drinking culture wasn’t as emphasized, and her father was an alcoholic and that drove her as far away from wanting to drink as it possibly could. Still, Statesman whiskey wouldn’t be her first choice, but she supposes it is the best if it’s the type of thing you like.

Second, it’s impolite to listen in on conversations that aren’t meant for your ears. It’s a little difficult walking that line while working for Statesman, but she appeases herself (and her grandmother’s warning) by only listening to the conversations she needs to. It’s how she can justify listening in to agents on ops, or interrogations, but when it comes to Merlin and Galahad first speaking with their patient— _Harry_ —she turns a blind eye. When they march out into the hallway after Italy, an argument brewing on Galahad’s face, she keeps her eyes on her patient and ignores the yelling she hears in the hallway.

Third, Agent Whiskey is a fucking liar.

Ginger drops f-bombs sparingly, but figures it’s warranted in this case. After she brought him back, she figured it would be the regular case of “debrief and rest”, but after Whiskey realized where the Kingsman were going—what they were going to _do_ —he was out of there like a summer thunderstorm. So fast you’d never even know he was there, save for the carnage and unanswered questions left behind.

She readies the Silver Pony for him because she’s not about to get in his way. She knows that not everything is right, but she’s not too sure which pieces are _wrong_. So after Whiskey is up and away, blazing a trail to Cambodia (without so much as asking for backup, strange if this supposed “Kingsman threat” is so real), after she takes a moment to stare at her station and try to rationalize it and figure out what she missed, she taps the side of her glasses. “Champ?”

He’s more surprised than her, she hears it in his voice. “Ginger?”

“Can I take the Golden Bull?”

His silence isn’t condemning, necessarily, more edging on the line of contemplative. She barrels on before he can ask any questions—it’s easier for her this way. “It’s just—I’m not sure that Whiskey’s completely okay. I think there’s something wrong.”

“And you still let him go?" 

“They might need his help,” Ginger hedges, because there’s no way she’s going to tell Champ that she was _scared_. “I figured more back up may be helpful, as opposed to less. But now…”

She trails off, hoping that he gets where she’s going. Champ might be a little out of touch some days, but there’s yet to be a time when he lets Ginger down and today isn’t the exception. “Now you think that might’ve been a mistake.”

“I just want a chance to sure it wasn’t, and it rectify it if it was.”

There’s a second where Ginger thinks Champ is going to deny her request. Not that Champ thinks she can’t do it—Champ is more than aware that Ginger is capable of doing what agents in the field do—but due to numbers. There are other agents who are closer, and Tequila is still on ice. There are people who can take care of him, it doesn’t have to be Ginger, but Champ might hold her back because he’d want the best to look out for him.

She wishes she could see his face. Champ wears his heart on his sleeve. 

“You’re a good agent, Ginger,” Champ starts eventually, and Ginger’s heart falls, but then he says, “make sure you get the story straight and those boys home safe.” 

“Yes, sir,” Ginger says. She cuts the connection, and only realizes as she readies the Golden Bull for take-off that Champ didn’t specify which boys he was referring to.

 

-

 

The flight is long enough that the doubt has enough time to well and truly sink its claws in.

There’s not much else for her to do. She goes over what she knows about Poppy Adams, including the Poppyland compound and the golden circle. The limited information she has on Charlie Hesketh and the threat that he’ll pose to the mission. Poppy’s tech, that they know of, and any possible way she can circumvent it.

She tests the weight of her handgun in her palm. It’s foreign, so different than a pen or a stylus, but she might have to use it. That’s what she signed up for. It’s not that she doesn’t know how—she spends as much time in the range as any of them—but firing it and smelling the gunpowder and seeing the blood will make everything viscerally real.

She still won’t be an official field agent. She might end up back behind a desk after all this is said and done, and she’s going to have to act like she’s okay with that.

She needs to be grateful for what she has, is what she needs to be. She’s a brilliant handler for Statesman, and that’s where she belongs. What’s she doing, going out into the field? Merlin went because—well, Ginger’s not too sure why Merlin went, she’s going to have to ask when they get back—but Ginger has very little experience whatsoever. How is she supposed to help? Maybe it is like Merlin said, that sometimes it’s better not to know. Sometimes it’s better to do what you can, and wait in silence for the carnage afterwards to make itself known.

But Ginger’s never been really good at sitting. She always fidgeted her way through church sermons and family meals, waiting for the opportune time to beg her mama to go play outside with her siblings and cousins. They’d play cops and robbers, or some sort of spy game, and because she was one of the few girls she would always be the robber or the damsel in distress.

Yes, sometimes it’s better to not know. Ginger’s just sick of waiting on the sidelines for the heroes to come home, whatever doubt she’s feeling be damned.

 

-

 

Landing the plane is—perilous. Yes. Perilous is a good word.

Taking off is easier than landing it, and it’s not like the mountains of Cambodia are prime real estate for putting a plane down. Ginger manages it with steady hands even as her brain is going five hundred miles a second telling her _what to do_ and _what to do if that goes wrong_ and _here are all of the possible ways that this could go wrong_ , and once the plane is settled and motionless she goes through the motions of turning everything off and just _breathes_.

Then the plane shakes slightly with the sound of an explosion in the distance, and Ginger remembers she doesn’t have _time_.

She sends a message to Champ to let him know that she arrived okay, and then grabs the bag that she packed and climbs out of the plane. She’d parked close to where the Kingsman neatly parked their plane and Whiskey haphazardly abandoned is, and she grips the straps of her bag tighter as she walks past them to the path that’s been cut into the jungle. She has alpha gel and gauze and bandages and painkillers and everything else that she thought that she’d need, and she might not need any of that. The thought comforts her as she climbs—she might not need any of it. Whiskey might snap out of it. It might all be okay. 

Gunfire.

Of course, she might need all of it and then some.

 

-

 

It feels like time drags on as she climbs, but that might just be the helplessness distorting things. The humidity is making her sweat and causing her clothes to stick to her skin, and if this is how she feels she can only imagine how the Kingsman agents are doing in their suits. There has to be something that the tailors do to make the fabric more breathable—she’ll have to ask Merlin about it, he’d probably know. 

She only catches first sight of Poppyland because of a clearing that’s in the trees. As she gets closer, steady noises from the compound now died down to just random bursts of shouting and gunfire and the general sound of buildings collapsing, Ginger realizes that that clearing in trees isn’t supposed to be there.

Landmines. 

She really hopes they were disengaged, but she doesn’t have a choice. She swallows thickly, adjust the grip on her bag, and keeps going. If something—someone?—triggered a landmine, it might be someone that she knows. And if it’s someone that she knows, then they’ll need her help. The mission can’t be compromised because of a single casualty, there are millions of lives at stake, but that’s why Ginger’s here. To make sure that she gets the boys home safe.

The smell of _burning_ stings her nose, making her cough, but she keeps going. She takes small, slow steps, eyes carefully on the ground, and if it wasn’t for that she might’ve missed the hand stretched limply across her path entirely.

She knows that hand.

Her eyes trace it, then follow the line of the arm to the face that she knows. She makes herself look, even though she wants to look away.

_Merlin_.

His chest rises and falls, barely, but when Ginger bends down to check his pulse is weak. She can’t see any discernible wounds on his torso and she thinks, _What the hell happened_ , but then she catches sight of his legs—where his legs _used_ to be—

She tears open the bag she has with her and works quickly. Ties a tourniquet around both thighs— _like that’s going to help, Ginger, what do you think you can do for him_ —and she starts to cut away Merlin’s pants. When she sees the full depth of the carnage she was to look away, and when the smell hits her the vomit climbs up her throat without asking for permission. She throws up, away from Merlin, and then she grabs the bottle of Statesman whiskey she’d brought in the bag, takes a swig right from the bottle, and gets back to work. 

The alpha gel was made for head injuries, but it may help with Merlin’s legs. Not that there’s any hope of restoring Merlin’s legs; if he lives (that _if_ tears at Ginger’s soul), then he’ll have to have prosthetics. The best prosthetics not even on the market yet, but prosthetics all the same, and at least Merlin will be _alive_. The alpha gel will help stimulate regeneration, which should help stop the bleeding. She wraps one leg with it and then the other, and if any of the other agents get a head injury they’re going to be shit out of luck but Whiskey’s got one in his hat so that’ll have to do. After she activates the alpha gel she wraps Merlin’s legs in gauze, then checks his pulse again.

Still weak. Still there.

The sound of gunshots starts again, but there’s not as many this time. One gun, maybe two, all coming from the same location. Ginger hopes that the agents hurry up, because she knows that millions of lives are at stake but Merlin is okay—well, okay as he can be, and only for now. He’s okay for as long as Ginger’s haphazard battlefield treatment works, and there’s no guarantee that it will continue to work, and she’s scared.

There are four things Ginger knows.

First, staying away from the stock isn’t as difficult as the Statesman agents make it out to be.

Second, it’s impolite to listen in on conversations that aren’t meant for your ears.

Third, Agent Whiskey is a fucking liar. 

And, finally, you don’t have to shoot the gun to be the hero. Sometimes, being the hero looks like sitting behind a computer and shutting doors behind agents as they escape.

Others, it looks like holding a clammy hand tightly in yours and praying to every deity you can think of in the middle of the Cambodian jungle that help comes fast.


End file.
